I would pay real money for an Eternal Sunshine brainwipe so I could play Outer Wilds for the first time again
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I played MGS for the first time about two years ago and I eventually found that I liked to think about the models and the textures and the world as visual flair to create a theme but really what you’re playing is the radar. Like how a battle screen in a RPG has guys smacking each each other, just for the sake of fun theming, but what you’re really looking at is the menus.
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Yeah and I don’t think that’s a problem either. VR Missions basically admits to this, too.
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“fucking aim at the fucking thing” I say 5 seconds before ragequitting the Revolver Ocelot fight
edit: I swapped from retroarch to duckstation, and it’s much better. Recognized the analog inputs on my Xbone controller so I could play Ridge Racer 4 the right way ™
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new lilith zone game “room map” is great, i’m fascinated by the way her recent unity things have revolved around the experience of clipping the camera through 3d models to reveal unseen nested areas inside or outside…it feels like a very videogamey mode of structuring and exploration, stripping down mechanical friction until there’s nothing left but somehow still finding a kind of interesting friction in the uncertain boundaries that result. previous games in the noclips style have seen you moving outwards to discover new worlds beyond the horizon skyboxes, this one maybe feels more moving in that it’s the other way around, purely inward investigation of your sealed living room(?), one of the smallest and densest of these spaces yet, without even the ability to use the default unity hop button to bounce around. thinking about the basic mystery of inverted normal videogame geometry also makes me think that surely we’re only a few years out from a sitcom called Inverted Normal about mismatched housemates making a unity game together. zoey deschanel could be in it.
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The true Metal Gear Solid starts here?
(MGS1 is almost quaint in its male gazeness compared to what is to come later, MGS IV is a beast unto itself in this regard.)
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Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown (PS3)
There seems to be a reference to Cory from Planet Harriers in Sarah’s wardrobe.
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This is a 1CC I just obtained. Check video notes for route breakdown.
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tried replaying Riven a week ago to see how quickly it would come back to me. took a little longer than i expected, around 2 hours. i still remembered the numeral system (hell i used it to write dates for months after playing) but forgot that one of the main puzzles required you to translate between three different information formats (colour → eye symbol → island) and a fair bit of scurrying around was still necessary to bring all that together. having a full rotatable 3d extrusion map of your game world as a mechanical object inside your game is cool and ballsy as hell. still a tremendous sense of anticipation before activating the power dome; they evoked a real gravity to the sci-fi for a game about using books to warp to other worlds. gehn’s proposal and unchocking the telescope always send shivers through me too
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it is nice to see puchi carat appreciation
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itchio night follow up: going through my settings recently i found the exclude adult content setting was on, which i switched off in a spirit of fairmindedness, not realising it was a load-bearing toggle when it came to being able to use the “new and popular” browsing page. but i’m glad i did as i’m pretty sure that i wouldn’t have otherwise stumbled on the work of TOZUDO, many of whose games are or seem to want to be pornographic in nature, even if it’s a version of pornography that comes from an alternate universe.
first game i played was demo 4 of “my car attacks” which introduces many of the classic tozudo hallmarks: controls / animations / sounds that are just off and uneven enough that you’re never quite sure which of your actions are doing anything, the ability to fire projectile pellets across a landscape, a points system and strange changes in emphasis that are triggered in an uncertain way, in this case a laughing 3d head insert that pops up when you blow up certain cubes but not all? the landscape is dotted with art drawings but also what look like random pages of sexy spanish comics. this is a comparatively slick entry since you are always rolling around and there’s a sense of optimism from the corrugated plain beneath the blue sky.
next up was “Sexual Pleasure”, subtitle: “brunette enjoys”. you see the lady in the attached thumbnail who is kind of squirming in a void and when you click the mouse button, your flailing 3d hand throws an unpleasantly flesh textured capsule at her. it would feel much more sleazy if not for the fact that the direction of the physics capsules feels incredibly arbitrary every time you hit the button. i’m still not sure how it works, i spammed dozens of capsules and never made my (or hers, i guess) “pleasure” score go above 0.
i haven’t played any of the commercial games yet so can’t say anything yet about either “pinball xxx” or “the perverted thief”. i did play a demo for the perverted thief where i wasn’t sure if i was playing or not or if it was just an endless cutscene playing out: the thief flails his arms in random directions and constantly laughs while he’s surrounded by angry victims whose underwear he’s stolen, and the camera constantly goes in and out but also seems to change direction sometimes? am i controlling the arms? unsure but again this is probably something that would feel more sleazy if it was less inexplicable.
next up is demo 5 for “western horror”. it’s hard for me to get a sense out of how many tozudo games there are because they tend to upload different builds as seperate itch pages, sometimes changing the name in the process… this was definitely a step up from the last one, it starts with a completely impossible to parse cutscene where the camera jiggles and rotates crazily as dozens of spraying physics polygons are used to evoke a cowboy crawling out of a grave, and then without being sure exactly when the game starts you’re walking around as the cowboy, shooting the ground repeatedly with a gun it seems impossible to aim, while other strange undead figures stand in a line on a platform firing at you. as far as i know it’s impossible to die. at odd moments the camera abruptly changes to a close zoom in on the face of either your cowboy or one of the antagonists but it’s impossible to say what it denotes. this one was pretty good
i didn’t have the heart to try “western gay”, which seems to be a reskin of “western horror” except now full of dominatrixes who ignore you when you shoot them in favour of grinding against each other playing porn movie samples. but the main character’s design is pretty fun. this is Bayonetta, to me.
next up is the “mad werewolf” series which seems particularly close to the creator’s heart, apparently there are 14(!) of these games which you can buy in a bundle for $5. unfortunately they’re maybe the hardest going of all these works, the whole game is like a train car(?) full of emptily gesturing 3d people who you as the werewolf can claw or fart on to slowly, doggedly reduce their surprisingly large health bars while they stand there. occasionally the camera will cut to someone’s face and get stuck there. a lot of these games feel like they were made less to be self contained and more like they’re playable supplements to some private fantasy, which is maybe why they all also have excited subtitles like “EROTIC HORROR ACTION” “eroticism and gore and sexual horror” “LOTS OF ACTION AND FEAR” “beheading action”. there are also ones for “MIXING CINEMA AND CHILDREN’S STORIES” and “playing with the camera and the points of view, long live the cinema!!!” which confirm the changes in POV were intentional, which pleases me. one of them is subtitled “violence and eschatological”, which from context might have been a misspelled autocorrect version of “scatalogical” instead.
before this there was a more commercial period with emphasis on a more military theme. it’s not my style but “the olympic sniper” at least looks extremely cool.
the games keep going… as of now i’m about halfway through the list, which also includes games like “warlike feats” “baby boum” (where you’re a baby with a gun) and the yellow airplanes series.
at the very bottom of the list we find titles like “blender first person shooter” and many games about shooting barrels by firing little physics cubes at them, which slowly pile and fill up the level as you keep shooting. i’m pleased that Tozudo, whoever he or she is, seems to have recently returned to their love of depersonalised physics toys after sojourns through the horror, action and western genres… may their interests continue percolating across another million demos. year of tozudo!!
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Not that it justifies it or makes it better or anything but there is actually a gameplay reason later on for the male gaze shot in MGS1. It’s a total one-off thing but it’s there.
While on the subject of 1CCs, I also climbed THIS mountain of death a few days ago, after like 90 hours of increasingly unhealthy practicing.
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Got kinda nostalgic for Hotline Miami (almost ten years old now!!!) and since it’s on PS+ Premium I downloaded it. Immediately uninstalled when I got into the game and discovered it to be an uncontrollable mess on gamepad. This is a keyboard & mouse game thru and thru.
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i really like the whole Steam Next Fest thing as a way to get people to play a bit of a bunch of games they wouldn’t otherwise. so i’ve tried to engage with them somewhat and played some steam demos for my stream that are worth talking about here.
someone on here posted about VIVIDLOPE awhile ago so that was one of the first i checked out. this game is basically what you’d expect from looking at the screenshots - it’s a puzzle game that made me think of like Kula World or English Country Tune or Devil Dice or anything like that. the one difference is it’s but a bit more slick and smooth in terms of gameplay. it’s more action-oriented and less puzzley than it probably seems at first. the enemies can be tricky to get around at times. the stages felt pretty varied and it got harder towards the end. it also had a ranking system like in the 3D sonics.
definitely the big attraction is the Y2K aesthetics. the music sounded a bit like a Bomberman Hero or something in that vein, tho maybe slightly less distinctive than that. it seems like a lost Dreamcast game from late in the system’s existence. while i’m cynical about things marketing on the aesthetic alone, this definitely one of the better executions of a game in that sort of style i’ve seen. a lot of nice little touches with the UI and the animation throughout that are like a bit Vib Ribbon-esque. your little rabbit character gets extremely excited when you do well and extremely distraught when you accidentally die, which is funny.
some of the backgrounds look real nice too
anyway, that one is recommended.
the next one worth talking about is Extreme Evolution: Drive To Divinity. i’ve talked about this creator Sam Atlas and his series of “Space Hole” games on here before, and this is in a similar vein.
basically what happens is that it’s an open-ended 3D marble rolling style game where stages connect up to each other in various non-linear ways and you collect a bunch of different abilities to evolve to in order to help you more easily advance to new worlds. the abilities get assigned to different keys/buttons and you can transform when you want. it’s kind of Metroidvania-ish, i guess, but it feels more like you’re exploring random worlds than trying to master the environment or whatever. and you have to spend currency in order to transform, which you need to collect throughout the different stages. it also has a Trackmania-esque restart button you can use of the jankier/harder bits or if you fall off the stage or accidentally used a transform so you can redo stages multiple times.
it sounds weird but once i got the hang of it i really started to like it. the levels are varied and interesting in their own sort of extremely abstract way. sort of them sort of feel like a deconstructed version of Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament map. the sensibility, from the extreme strobing visuals, to the very dramatic music, to the names of the levels and transformations being things with these intense spiritual/bodily component leaves things feeling kind of strange and profound at times. whenever you discover a new stage it looks like this:
even the menus have a very distinctive feeling to them. the only point of comparison i have is something like Oikospiel to be honest. there really isn’t anything like this guy’s games.
the main problem right now with the demo is the frame rate. it’s perfectly fine with some levels but basically unplayable in a few bigger ones. i thought it might just be settings but having messed around with them more after my stream, i think it’s just really poorly optimized. hopefully that can be improved upon in the final version. because otherwise - there isn’t really anything like this (or the Space Hole) games and i would really recommend it if you like rolling around abstract 3D spaces.
the next game i played was called The Gray Man and it’s like a point and click horror adventure game with interesting scribbly art that reminded me of a lot of free games from 10-15 years ago.
unfortunately the story didn’t really compel me (felt kind of like a hacky edgelordy ‘you are the bad guy’ style story), and the point and click navigation was pretty rough and hard to understand at times. it was kind of hard knowing what you were supposed to activate and what wasn’t necessary. some elements sort of felt lost in translation i guess - tho even ignoring that, the story didn’t seem very interesting at all.
it’s a shame, because there’s something unique here that i don’t really feel like is captured in a lot of other indie horror games in this vein that i’ve played. the amount of detail in the first house made it just a compelling space to wander around in. and the last segment i played (i guess the ending of the first half) in particular had some interesting bits to it. it did some nice stuff with controller rumble too.
anyway - it’s pretty rough and i’m not sure i’d recommend it but it also wasn’t without its appeal either. and the Demo’s still available if it looks interesting to any of you anyway. like i said - there is something compelling here and i found it kinda memorable even tho it’s rough.
the last one worth talking about was Moons of Darsalon which i think i first saw on here - can’t remember if it was just in the random Steam games thread or somewhere else. it was in Steam Next Fest last July but i missed out on it until now. thankfully the demo is still available to download and play.
anyway, i’m not sure exactly what i expected - but this game was actually really good. it feels like a lost Amiga puzzle platformer but upgraded for modern sensibilities. movement and animation are real smooth. sound design and stuff were nice. just felt like it had a lot of personality.
you have to escort a bunch of guys to the end of perilous levels. it’s a bit Lemmings or Lost Vikings esque i guess. some people are going to find this too tedious for them. but i think the variety of little dialogue quips the characters vocalize while you’re guiding them are really funny and add a lot of charm to the game. it’s basically about as well done as a game that’s an escort mission like this could be, to me.
also apparently you get vehicles and shit later in the game? looks pretty cool. it even had a really nice teaser at the end of the demo when you exit that shows off a lot of stuff later in the game. just a really likable game that it seems like the creator has worked hard on and i hope people on here check out when it comes out in a couple months.
anyway - if any of these games seem interesting to any of you, i think all of them have demos that are still available.
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I first tried this with a controller, and wondered whether I was missing something. It turns out, I was. If you use a mouse you can look around instead of just facing forward the whole time. I’m glad I noticed that before quitting.
I’m glad people are still making weird things like this. Even the televisions have little monuments and things inside them.
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This is, maybe kind of a spoiler for it, but Masochisia is also a point and click first person horror adventure game from 2015 presumably based on the same story and seeming 2 share some of the flaws. I thought that one was alright though
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Grim Tides was ultimately a grindy slog that stopped even being appealing as a time-waster. I’d stumbled upon a build that trivialized the (already pretty shallow) combat and the “dungeon event” CYOA stuff stopped showing me anything new.
The writing was decent but not enough to get me to keep going.
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tried out Taiji, a Witness clone but all 2D pixel art & clicking on grid cells instead of drawing a line. will write up something in the Puzzle thread when I have some thoughts
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yeah! some of the structures are replicated inside the heads and bodies of the dollhouse beings too, it feels very dense in the way the different layers are visually talking to each other… it feels like a very weird comparison to make but i was sorta reminded of chris ware haha
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